The Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London has been working on a virtual reality hospital to help students learn the mechanics of interacting with patients and working within the facility.

A group of third year medical students have been accessing virtual patients on a threedimensional respiratory ward in Second Life as part of a pilot study of game-based learning. A total of 24 students are participating in the pilot, which is comparing their knowledge of key data with that of 21 students taught via an online module.

Two years ago, a 24-year-old schizophrenic man killed his mother with a hatchet a few months after being released from a psychiatric center over the objections of his doctors.

This weekend’s WSJ tells the story, and uses it as a lens to examine the system in which government-funded mental health advocates sometimes wind up arguing against doctors for the release of the mentally ill.